Over the past decade the Internet has rapidly become an important source of information for individuals and businesses. The popularity of the Internet as an information source is due, in part, to the vast amount of available information that can be downloaded by almost anyone having access to a computer and a modem. Moreover, the internet is especially conducive to conduct electronic commerce, and has already proven to provide substantial benefits to both businesses and consumers.
Many web services have been developed through which vendors can advertise and sell products directly to potential clients who access their websites. To attract potential consumers to their websites, however, like any other business, requires target advertising. One of the most common and conventional advertising techniques applied on the Internet is to provide advertising promotions (e.g., banner ads, pop-ups, ad links) on the web page of another website which directs the end user to the advertiser's site when the advertising promotion is selected by the end user. Typically, the advertiser selects websites which provide context or services related to the advertiser's business.
Conventionally, the process of adding contextual advertising promotions to web page content is both resource intensive and time intensive. In recent years the process has been somewhat automated by utilizing software applications such as application servers, ad servers, code editors, etc. Despite such advances, however, the fact remains that conventional contextual advertising techniques typically require substantial investments in qualified personnel, software applications, hardware, and time.
Furthermore, conventional on-line marketing and advertising techniques are often limited in their ability to provide contextually relevant material for different types of web pages. One reason for this is due to the fact that conventional on-line advertising techniques typically rely upon non-real time analysis of web page content (e.g., from cashed versions of static web pages) to make determinations as to which advertising promotions will be contextually relevant to each web page. However, user customizable web pages, password protected web pages, and real-time dynamically generated web pages are examples of other types of web pages for which it is difficult or impossible to access or predict the content of such pages. The problem intensifies when dealing with sites in which the web page content is continuously changing over time such as, for example, news sites.
Accordingly, it will be appreciated that there exists a need for improving on-line contextual advertising techniques in order to utilize real-time analysis of web page content for identifying advertising promotions that are contextually relevant to such content.